Author: Dan
Title: Here With Me
Timeline: after EW
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
Warnings: shoujo ai, death, songfic
Note: the song quoted is 'Here' by Dido
The raging pain threatens to split her skull open. It feels as if her brain is trying to push itself out. She stands, sways, and finds it difficult to remain upright. The room moves in unpredictable ways, and her vision doubles and then triples. All she wants is to lie down and let the pain over take her, but she can't. The sense of urgency forces her to stand and fight her way to the center of the mayhem that has descended upon the assembly floor. She has to find Relena.
Screaming, so much screaming.
She drowns in the horrified, rising keen of frightened voices. Cerulean eyes lock on hers. Fading. Those beloved eyes swim in her failing vision. She pulls Relena close to her, finding comfort in the solid weight. Up close she can see that well-loved face, see the expression waver between love and pain. Her panic crushes her heart, kills her ability to think as she watches those pink lips move painfully.
"Hush," she whispers harshly. The sound squeezes out of her mouth, despite the growing pressure crushing her chest and the pain raging inside her head. "You'll be fine. They're coming. They're coming," she whispers the comforting lie as she rocks her precious burden softly. "You'll be fine."
Her voice hitches. She knows all those comforting words are lies, but she needs them. Those beloved cerulean eyes soften, amused, and then tighten, pained. She wants to rock her beloved in her arms, to chase away the pain, but she knows--oh she knows--that it is far too late.
Fingers dig into her arm. She looks down, terrified, but desperately tries not to show it. Those lips move again, determined now. But she can't hear the words.
She leans forward, almost pressing her ear to those soft lips that would on another, more intimate occasion, caress her delicately, and she tries to catch those whispered words. Breath flutters the soft hair near her ear, but she can't hear.
Those lovely, beloved cerulean eyes dim. The lips still. And she can't hear anything.
~~I didn't hear you leave,
I wonder how am I still here~~
Dark brown dirt, damp not from rain, but from being ripped from the depths of the earth, falls on the mahogany wood. The priest recites the ancient words as he tosses a new clod of dirt on the polished wood. She watches the ageless, meaningless ceremony, and the soft voices are whispering, whispering. Like the rise and fall of the tide, those murmurs crash against the ears—the mind—much softer than rocks that break the tide, much more fragile.
So much easier to break.
Simple black against pale skin, white-blonde hair—It's not a good color for her.
She stands in the summer heat in the heavy woolen dress, but does not feel. Stands in the middle of the sea of whispers, but does not hear. Stands in the middle of the ceremony, but does not see.
Memories have already started creeping forward in her mind. The ghosts of the past have already begun to gather around her, to hang on the edges of her sight and paint everything with the taint of bitterness.
A soft, almost hesitant touch falls on her arm. For a moment she feels another touch. The light, playful touch she loves. Then the painful, bruising touch she fears. Then the ghost pulls away, and she is left staring into worried eyes the color of chocolate.
"Dorothy?"
In her mind she hears another voice calling her, remembers hearing a voice with the same quiet dignity call her for the first time. The power of the memory clouds her eyes for the shortest of seconds as she sees Relena superimposed over Lady Une's worried face. The image is too powerful. She's forced to close her eyes to push it away.
She pulls away from Une's gentle touch. In another time she would have derided the older woman for her presumption, but now the white-blonde only wants to flee. She does not want to see Her gentleness in the Lady's gestures. The battle to keep her mind in the present, instead of living in the dream of her past, is too tiring, too exhausting. She presses her hands to her head as if the physical barrier between her mind and the world will stop the ghosts from coming.
The press of people who have come to give their less-than-heartfelt condolences eases for a moment, and then disappears. She lowers her hands and finds, not another worried pair of eyes, but Heero Yuy's empty gaze. Dorothy drops her hands to her sides. She now feels utterly drained.
"Dorothy."
She steps forward to place her hand on his arm, and lets him lead her away from the crowd, from the tide of whispered comments, from the condolences she does not want to hear.
Heero does not look at her, and she does not look at him. She can't stand looking at him, because he makes it impossible to ignore the memory-ghost of Her.
He steers her through the crowd that has come to mourn. Mourn, she thinks with a trace of her normal derision, something they never understood. Never even wanted to understand. The sudden rush of bitter rage feels good. It fills the emptiness that has come to define her life since ... since that day. But the feeling fades, as everything does, and she's too tired to try to hold onto it.
She must have made a small sound, because Heero stops suddenly. She bumps into him, not paying attention. Her feet slide from beneath her, sliding across the soft, slick mud. She can see the ground rushing up to meet her for an unloverlike kiss. But then it stops moving toward her and her arms begin to hurt.
She looks up into Heero's equally expressionless face, and then glances down to where he holds her just above her elbows. "My arms hurt."
Heero sets her down with more gentleness than he caught her with. Treating her with more care now as a way of apologizing, perhaps. She looks at him, and then closes her eyes. They have never liked each other. True. But they have always understood each other. They understood each other better than they ever understood Her. She stares at him through the numbness that has settled over her like a veil.
The numbness is the same and yet different from the one that had settled over after her father's death. The hot rage that had kept her going was gone, and left in those ashes was a core of ice that pulsed beneath her skin, freezing her blood. Without Relena that core of ice was growing, seeping through her like slow poison. She shivers despite the oppressive summer heat and the heavy woolen dress. Without Relena she is frozen.
"Dorothy."
She looks up into Heero's frozen sapphire eyes and sees the ice in her soul reflected in his. She just shakes her head. Her thick hair moves slowly across her back, sweeping back and forth in a steady motion.
She keeps shaking her head, as if every shake of her head would deny the day's reality, keeps shaking her head even when the tears won't come.
~~I don't want to move a thing,
it might change my memory~~
Dorothy lies on their bed, curled in a fetal position, her hair spread out around her like a golden coverlet. The door opens quietly, as if even its normally squeaky hinges do not want to intrude on her solitude.
Une frowns at the prone figure, a delicate line forming between her eyes. She gently sits down on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb its sole occupant. Dorothy does not move, makes not a single gesture to suggest that she has noticed the other woman's presence. Une lets out her breath in a slow sigh. Sally has been talking to her about Dorothy using those hushed, careful tones that doctor's use when they are worried and confused. Most of what Sally said made little or no sense to Une.
... cerebral blood flow ... intracranial pressure ... decline in CPP ... rise in MAP ... Cushing reflex ... central neurogenic hyperventilation ...
Shaking her head to chase the words away, Une stares down at that pale body. Dorothy's breathing is a little irregular, and her eyes do not seem to focus, true, but she did not look ill. She looked heartsick and broken, but not like she was on her deathbed.
"Dorothy?"
The girl does not make a single sound. Uncertain where she stands with the ice princess of Romerfeller, Une stares down at the pale profile helplessly. If the girl had been Mariemeia she would brush the thick hair, or pat the limp, long-fingered hand. But the two girls were as different from each other as the stars were from the moon.
But if Sally was right, then Dorothy was allowing herself to die. If Sally was right, then Dorothy desperately needed to be in the hospital; however, the girl flatly refused to move, and Yuy, damn him, enforced her wishes. But staring down at that still profile forces Une to accept Sally's words.
Dorothy--who had always been so strong, so determined--is slowly dying.
"Dorothy, Dorothy, you have to get up." Une gives into the urge to brush her hand along the thick white-blonde hair. She's startled to find that it feels like heavy satin, almost feels like she's petting a living thing. She pulls the warm, heavy fall of hair into her lap and runs her fingers through it. "You have to get up."
Dorothy does not respond. Une represses the urge to shake her until the life comes back into those glacier blue eyes; the memory of her own grief and hopelessness after Trieze's death stays her hand. Instead, she spills Dorothy's thick hair through her fingers and sorting out each individual strand.
She finds herself telling Dorothy how she had felt after Trieze's death. How she had lost her way, had found herself wandering in the dark until she had found a path of her own. Her hands move through Dorothy's heavy velvet hair without conscious thought. Une looks past the four white walls of the room to see herself and the helplessness that had engulfed before her like a black wave.
"So, you see," she whispers to the girl, leaning so far down that she almost presses her cheek to Dorothy's. "You see, you need to move on. You can't give up." Une's voice hitches. "You can't just give up."
~~oh I am what I am,
I'll do what I want,
but I can't hide~~
Dorothy knows people are worried. She knows people are scared. But somehow she can't bring herself to care, which is not unusual—she has rarely, if ever, cared about what other people think of her. However, she has a vague feeling that she ought to be surprised about all of the concern and attention that she has been attracting, but she can't find the energy.
She can't even find the energy to get off the bed.
It feels as if she doesn't have control over her own body, not even her own breathing. The pain in her head has dulled to a low, constant ache in the back of her head, right where the back of her skull meets her neck. Sometimes her vision fails her completely, but none of these things disturb her nearly as much as the ghosts that drift across her mind and superimpose themselves in her living world.
The covers are smooth under her fingers, and a little cool the way cotton sheets are before they have been slept on. The bed has been cool since She ... went away.
Even in the privacy of her own mind she can't say it. Even in the depths of her soul she can't admit that She is... not here. Can't let go. It doesn't feel like giving up; it feels like hanging on.
If she let go... if she let go... if she let go...
Long-fingered, lovely hands reach out of the darkness of her mind. Offering themselves to her, pleading through their gestures for her to accept them, to take them. Dorothy shudders. She fears those beautiful, pale hands. If she reached out to them, she would be letting go of everything that holds her to the world of Une, Sally, Heero, and the constant aching pain in her head.
She can't let go.
~~I won't go,
I won't sleep,
I can't breathe,
until you're resting here with me~~
Une faces off once again with Heero in front of the solid oak door that once led to Relena's bedroom, which has now become Dorothy's self-imposed cell. It's the same argument that they have gone through innumerable times over the past few weeks. Une represses the urge to pull her hair out in frustration.
"She needs to go to the hospital." Anyone other than Yuy would have cringed at the sharp dangerous pitch of her voice.
"Dorothy does not want to go," he replies in that flat tone that he uses to state his preference for paper or plastic. Why he insists upon enforcing Dorothy's wishes, Une does not know. All she does know is that he is allowing Dorothy to slowly kill herself.
"She is dying, Heero." She gives into her frustration and rubs at her temples when he does not bother to refute the statement. She looks through the fingers pressed to her forehead to glare at him. "If you know she's dying, then why are you getting in the way?"
"Moving her to the hospital would not change anything."
She gives him a sharp glare, "What do you mean?"
"I meant what I said," he states blankly. And then gives her a look that clearly says that he thinks she's being deliberately obtuse. Une does know what he means. She knows that without Relena, Dorothy will simply continue to look for a way to die.
Une simply can't accept that; refuses to accept that anyone who lived through the wars--anyone who was so intimate with the details of those times--would simply want to die. She decides to try a different tactic. "Has she eaten?"
"No."
"Is she sleeping?"
"No."
"Heero, she has to do something!"
"She is."
Une spins around on her heel to glare at the young man guarding Dorothy's door. The helplessness and frustration that she feels at the situation comes out in her expression. "What, then," she says with painful slowness. "Is she doing?"
"She's waiting."
"For what, Heero?!" Une nearly screams. "For what?!"
Heero does not answer. He merely regards her with the same passive-hostile stare he gives everyone. In his blank eyes Une sees the numbness that has slide into Dorothy's glacier gaze. Her breath goes out in a nearly inaudible rush of air.
"What you are waiting for ... " she begins softly. Heero merely looks at her. Une closes her eyes. "What you are waiting for will never happen."
~~I won't leave,
I can't hide,
I cannot be,
until you're resting here with me~~
She can feel another person's presence in the room. Feel them waiting for her to acknowledge them. Dorothy does not bother to fight the battle to open her eyes. She doesn't want to leave the dreams where Relena lives. She waits for the person to leave, waits for the pressure of their presence to dissipate so she can return to the dreams of Her.
The presence does not go. The tension draws out, unravels between her and her unwanted visitor like a spool of string.
She opens her eyes and nearly smirks. Of course, only Heero Yuy would be so persistent, so irritatingly patient. She doesn't bother to sit up. He won't care. She stares at him across the expanse of white sheets. He's sitting on of the straight-backed, uncomfortable chairs that She had insisted upon buying. Dorothy uncurls her hand to afford herself a more unobstructed view.
"Awake?"
She nods minutely. Trying to speak is too much work.
"Hungry?"
She shakes her head a little more firmly. Heero does not sigh as Lady Une would; he merely looks at her from underneath a thick fringe of bangs. The intensity of his regard might have been unnerving at another time, but Dorothy understands him a little too well to be shaken.
She knows he is looking for his reflection in her. Looking for the same hollow spot in the soul.
Silence fills the room like rainwater filling an empty barrel, but neither one of them feels uncomfortable. All the times in their past when all they could do was fight seems so far away to her. Of course, the one thing that they ever truly fought over was gone from their grasp.
"It's never going to stop is it? This feeling?"
"No."
~~I don't want to call my friends,
they might wake me from this dream/
and I can't leave this bed,
risk forgetting all that's been~~
"Heero, get out of the way!" The terse scream echoes through the hallway. The frustrated sound rebounds around the unnaturally quiet halls.
Sally glares at the young man standing in front of the door. She steps to the side; he follows. She steps to the other side; he follows. This has been going on for over an hour. She breaks down and gives a short scream of rage. Heero's impassive expression somehow still manages to convey that he thinks this particular reaction is a bit extreme.
"She's my patient, Heero."
"I know."
"She needs to be in the hospital," Sally argues. But it's like arguing with a wall, only less satisfying.
"Dorothy does not want to be admitted."
Sally grounds her teeth in frustration. She has heard the same argument one too many times over the past week. "She still needs to go."
"She cannot be committed against her will," he replies calmly.
In her head, Sally is swearing. "We could have admitted through implied consent."
"How," he asks reasonably. "She is not insane, she is not unconscious, and she is not a child. There are no legal grounds."
"She's depressed."
"She's grieving," he rejoins. "And that is still not legal grounds to admit her over her objections."
"Une agrees with me," Sally comments, hoping that perhaps the Head of the Preventor's opinion might sway him. She is, of course, wrong.
"I know what Une thinks."
Sally gives him a penetrating look, and sees the same hollowness behind his eyes that Une spotted. Something in her shivers at the bleakness. "You disagree?"
Heero looks away for a moment, an unprecedented show of uncertainty. "I don't ... think what is wrong with Dorothy is anything that you can heal."
"What do you think is wrong with Dorothy?" Sally asks very quietly, startled by this show of vulnerability and concern for a girl that he had shown all signs of hating until this point.
He looks straight into her painfully earnest gaze. "Everything."
~~oh I am what I am,
I'll do what I want,
but I can't hide~~
She hasn't moved from the room despite Une's desperate pleas. She knows she's lost weight, lost far, far too much weight. Lost so much that Sally has threatened to drag her to the hospital and inject the missing nutrients into her blood stream.
And then there is the fact that Sally seems to think there is something wrong with her head.
Her lips draw back into a snarl. It's not like she's not perfectly aware of what is happening. It's not like her higher brain functions have stopped. She simple does not care.
She watches Heero walk into the room and regard her with that almost unreadable stare. She knows what he sees when he looks at her. Her eyes track him as he walks to his normal chair, but she does not raise her head, merely flattens her hand against the sheets so her knuckles don't block her view.
"Why do you come?" Even to her ears, her voice sounds harsh.
"I don't know."
"Because you owe her?"
"Why do you never leave this room?"
Dorothy smiles at his question. 'Wandered a little too close, Heero?' she asks silently. Heero's gaze meets hers despite the heavy fringe of bangs hanging in front of his eyes. She sighs and thinks over his question. He deserves that much from her.
"I can't get away from Her," she says, knowing he'll understand what she means. "Everywhere I go, I see Her. Every time I close my eyes, I see Her. I hear Her in other people's voices." Dorothy closes her eyes; it's so hard to find the energy to even talk. "In this room, I can deal with living with her ghost. In this room ... "
Heero looks up as Dorothy's voice trails off. He does not prod her to finish. He knows what she was going to say. He watches her eyes flutter shut; listens to her belabored breathing.
Propping his hands on his chin he watches her fall into the blackness that passes for sleep.
~~I won't go,
I won't sleep,
I can't breathe,
until you're resting here with me~~
Finding energy to breathe has become a constant challenge. It feels as if the ghosts in her mind are drinking the life out of her. Emptying it from her body the way a thirsty man might empty a bottle.
She knows that she's spending far too much time asleep, but she can't seem to make herself stay awake. A small voice in her whispers that she doesn't want to wake up. Consciousness implied the constant pain that defines her days ever since ... that time.
And in her sleep she can be with Her. It seems as soon as she closes her eyes, begins that slow descent into darkness, She comes to her. In those dreams, the constant aching pressure in her head begins to eases, and she doesn't feel so horribly lost, or quite so cold. In her dreams she can hold on. She can find the one place where her feet won't slide out from underneath her.
She lets herself slide into that ever-waiting darkness without a single whimper. If she could be a little more honest with herself, she would admit that she not only allows herself to slide into it, she embraces it. As the inky blackness behind her eyes overwhelms her world, that silent pair of hands reaches out to her. She grabs them with her own dream-hands as if they are the last solid thing in the world. Because for her, they are.
Heero looks up from his post by Dorothy's bed. He is positive that in her sleep Dorothy had whispered: "Stay."
~~I won't leave~~
"Damn you, Yuy! I told you that she needed to be admitted."
Heero makes no reply, merely meets Sally's enraged glower with perfectly blank eyes. They stand only a few inches apart and glare at each other: Heero looking vaguely defiant and defensive, Sally looking fierce and snarling.
"Sally!" Une's semi-hysterical voice breaks the two apart. "She's won't wake up!"
The former Alliance doctor moves with more speed than Heero would originally have given her credit for. Sally leans over her reluctant patient with a look of growing concern in her eyes.
"She's awakened every time you've touched her before, right?" Sally's voice has taken on that hard edge of professionalism.
"Yes," they both answer. Une looks at Heero with hopelessness filling her eyes like tears.
Sally ignores the look exchanged between the two as she tends her patient, and mutters about dropping levels of consciousness and hemorrhaging in the brain.
~~I can't hide~~
The dreams hands that held hers seemed to be growing more solid, more real. Dorothy whimpers slightly. Desperate for this to be real, for this to actually last.
That silvery, velvet-coated laugh that she loved so much echoes in the nothingness that holds her captive. She lets go of that last thread tying her to the pain, the loneliness, and the emptiness.
In the darkness of mind Dorothy pauses to smirk sardonically. 'Well,' she thinks as she sinks deep into the blackness. 'They did keep telling me to let go.'
~~I cannot be,~~
"Her breathing has stopped," Sally states with terrible finality.
~~until you're resting here with me.~~
The End
(:./dan/here)
